


We of the Uncertain Subject

by SunderedAndUndone



Series: The Dialogues [6]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Smoking, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27509113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunderedAndUndone/pseuds/SunderedAndUndone
Summary: This takes place during that part of the Dialogues in between SkekGra and UrGoh's wanderings on the Black River Road, and the beginning of "We Desperately Tried to Convince the Rest..." -- when SkekGra and UrGoh (newly RE-resolved on trying to obey Thra's instructions to them after a slight...bump in the path) are sojourning at one of UrVa's wilderness boltholes. ...They did not, by the way, consult UrVa in advance about this.My first real attempt at feeling my way around inside the Archer's head. One-third SkekGra & UrGoh silliness, two-thirds vulnerable UrVa & UrGoh heart-to-heart, one-third blatant authorial self-indulgence. :-)
Relationships: skekGra & urGoh (Dark Crystal), urGoh & urVa (Dark Crystal)
Series: The Dialogues [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616017
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	We of the Uncertain Subject

UrGoh shook out the slim taper they’d used to light their pipe, took a few rapid little puffs on the pipe to stoke it, and handed it over to UrVa. The Archer was a keen observer of body language, and as such, could easily tell when the motions another creature made were practiced, habitual, and comfortable, and when they weren’t. UrAmaj at the soup-pot was almost liturgical dance: each arm snaking under and over the others to grab this, season that, or peel the other—sometimes with a bare paper’s thickness to spare, but never actually colliding. Ask the painfully modest Cook to perform a simple Spriton rhyme-charm with its traditional gestures at a village gathering, however, and they’d tremble like knotnut branches in a storm. The Weaver at their loom or their dulcimer had no trouble keeping a dozen lengths of thread or melody perfectly arranged and synchronized—but those _feet_ of theirs were a menace, could fairly trip on a pebble. Their only enemy in all Thra was the upturned edge of a carpet they’d themselves woven.

As for the Wanderer, smoking was one of a handful of tasks UrGoh had long performed with the effortless grace of a muski, because naturally it was. The Archer took a deep, silent pleasure in watching all displays of physical mastery, wherever they might occur in the planet’s constant ecological churn, and in whatever lifeform they might appear.

The leaf UrGoh had packed their pipe with tonight was pleasant too, touched with just one or two dustings of the hyfule yeast that sometimes grew on Stonewood variants of the plant. Stonewood rightfully steered well clear of the fungus themselves. A spoonful of the stuff could easily kill an adult Gelfling; even a sprinkling caused dangerous seizures that the Stonewood called “Raunip’s Jig;” and it was immortalized in a very ancient tale, the tragedy that once happened when they’d found an entire field to be tainted and mistakenly tried to exorcise the evil by burning it to the ground. An entire village lay dead the next morning. Gelfling were not at all used to banes of that scale, so UrVa doubted they’d ever forget the incident. Which was all to the good. Death was a powerful if cruel teacher.

UrRu, however, were big enough not just to survive a small dose of hyfule, but to take a relaxing and very slightly psychotropic effect from it. (The Wanderer claimed that the Dousan as well had invented a method of cutting its potency, and now used it as an ingredient for one of their many shamanic rituals. The Archer had no cause to doubt it.) UrVa didn’t often allow themselves to relax. But deep in a familiar patch of woods, in the company not just of a fellow UrRu, but of an honest-to-Thra _Skeksis_ _warrior_ as well—who emphatically _didn’t_ smoke—they were probably about as safe as they’d ever been in the last dozen trine. They took a couple long, deep drags on the pipe and passed it back to UrGoh’s waiting hand.

“Mm?” was UrGoh’s perfectly-understood query as to whether the quality met with UrVa’s approval. “Mm,” was the Archer’s entirely-sufficient reassurance. UrGoh nodded.

They sat together on the upper part of the slightly tilted rock shelf that sloped down toward UrVa’s hidden overlook, watching the stars do their Mystic-slow circle dance about the celestial axis. Sometimes UrGoh stretched out a hand or two and made various configurations with them, closing one eye—checking constellation distances and proportions, most likely. Although even in 1500 trine those measurements had changed very, _very_ little for the vast majority of the visible stars, there were a few wandering exceptions that, for obvious reasons, UrGoh held a little more fondly than the rest. (The Hunter had their favorite stars too, but for other, mostly unromantic reasons: navigation, tracking the life seasons of this or that species, reliable omens of trouble on the road, and so on.)

Either that, or UrGoh was seeing stories they wanted to remember and refine, as they often did when the leaf was good. One could never be certain at any given time whether the Wanderer’s vision was turned outward, inward, or in both directions at once.

After eight turns of passing the pipe, the Archer finally felt weightless enough to start a conversation.

“Well,” they observed, “maybe you _will_ do it.”

“Hrm,” UrGoh tranquilly agreed. But a moment later they added, “…Do what?”

“Succeed in taming your dark half.”

UrGoh’s head didn’t so much swivel on its stalk as meander in UrVa’s direction. “This isn’t a matter of _taming_ ,” they protested. (Another idiosyncrasy of theirs: sometimes they actually spoke faster when moderately intoxicated. Less internal censorship, perhaps.)

The Archer exhaled a long, slow plume and gave their old friend a fathomless look. “And you may succeed regardless.”

“Why do you think?”

“Because I saw their face earlier,” they replied, “when you stroked their feathers like a pet Tuitkaa.”

The Wanderer chuckled quietly. “Well. Surprised, I think…little wonder…”

“And their movement,” persisted UrVa. “They didn’t start or pull away. Not a fingernail’s width. And you knew they wouldn’t.”

This time UrGoh said nothing.

_“…I prefer walking,” the Wanderer objected, slowly, but very firmly._

_The Seeker raked their talons through the rather messily bound locks of their neck-mane. “That was well enough when we didn’t have anywhere specific to go. But if we do end up doing this—thing, it’ll be an unum’s walk just getting over to your village!”_

_“No, it won’t,” snuffled UrGoh. “You still don’t know…where it_ …is _.”_

_“I know if you say twelve days, that means an unum! You understand at some point I’m going to need to, to, to put in some kind of appearance, or…” They raised a hand, then dropped it limply back into their lap._

_“Besides.” The Wanderer shook their head. “I doubt…phegnese…will carry…a Mystic?”_

_“One_ I’ve _trained will carry anything I Grotting well like.”_

_The Archer, who was tying herb-bundles, all but forgotten some little way away, noted to themselves that the Skeksis wasn’t mentioning how long such a training would take. Or where they might find a phegnese already gentled to Skeksis riders, apart from their own army camp or the Castle of the Crystal. But pointing that out seemed as wise as trying to separate tussling Arduff. UrVa had always known UrGoh to be a stubborn one, especially as UrRu went. Still, the full thickness of their skull hadn’t become evident until they’d started butting it into that of their dark half…repeatedly…before UrVa’s wondering eyes._

_“I don’t…even know how…to steer them,” the Wanderer continued._

_“Fine, then don’t! I’ll be at the reins, all you have to do is sit behind and hold on.”_

_UrGoh’s brow folded over. “I’m not sitting…behind_ you _.”_

_That one made even UrVa’s jaw drop a little. “What!?” bleated the Skeksis. “Of all the nerve—”_

_The Wanderer rolled right on in perfect steadiness. “If…we ride tandem…I must go in front, with you looking…past me.”_

_“Oh Grot no. You in front? Why??”_

_“Because,” the Mystic countered, “_ my _back…isn’t full of…_ spikes _.”_

_After a moment’s wordless sputtering, SkekGra fired back with, “They’re not spikes, they’re quills. And they’re covered in cloth! Mostly!”_

_“Which…they’re already…partly sticking through.”_

_“Well, have you ever heard of capes?”_

_“And then…what if…something startled…or angered you?” UrGoh held up three of their fists together and let their fingers explode outward—at UrGoh-speed, but the charade was unmistakable—like a firework. “THWACK!”_

_“‘Thwack.’” Said quills were, in fact, already on the rise. “‘Thwack.’_ Really. _‘Thwack?’”_

_The Wanderer gave a huge, imperturbable nod. “Indeed.”_

_“And that’s the word from my ineffable Mystic! ‘Thwack!’”_

_“Yes.” UrGoh looked slightly downward, reaching out toward the breastbone portion of the Seeker’s ruff, and made just a few, very light, vertical strokes with the back of their fingers in the direction of the growth. The larger feathers, which had already mostly dwindled from their brief rouse, smoothed the rest of the way down to obscure the insulating fluff underneath. “This is…the only safe side…with the soft feathers.”_

_SkekGra looked down as well, not with the outraged or incredulous expression the Archer would have expected, but a much blanker one that could at most be called—attentive. Perhaps they had no idea what to feel._

_They just asked in a muted burr, “You think they’re soft?”_

_“Like Vapran silk,” affirmed their other shard quite matter-of-factly._

_The Skeksis seemed on the cusp of saying something further about it, but then shook themselves out and recovered (though only partly) their earlier pettish tone._

_“—Well, I still can’t just ‘look past you,’ UrGoh, I’m not the one with the muski-long bendy neck!”_

_The Wanderer shrugged, only the barest tugging visible at the corner of their mouth. “Then I fear…we are at an impasse, Seeker.”_

_UrVa decided to ask the question that had been sitting on their tongue for most of this: “_ Are _there any breeds of phegnese large enough to carry both a Skeksis and a Mystic, and their bags?”_

_Both halves looked up at the Archer, turning and blinking in exact unison (this had been happening more and more lately, eerie little moments when the incidental movements of one were precisely, unconsciously duplicated or mirrored by the other. They were always in passing, never more than a breath’s length—but to an eye like UrVa’s, completely unmistakable)._

_“Oh, no,” said SkekGra, and they glanced at UrGoh. “I don’t think so. Certainly not with the bags.”_

_“I’ve never heard of one,” the Wanderer agreed._

_And then they both stared at_ UrVa _again—in patent bafflement, as though they would ask,_ And what has that to do with anything?

“If they were _tame_ , they would… _behave_ ,” UrGoh sighed at last. “I can’t picture that happening anytime soon.” They threw a quick glance over their shoulder, even though the odds of the Seeker following the two Mystics here from the cave without somehow announcing themselves were slim. Few beings on Thra could take the Archer by surprise, in any case. “But GraGoh’s message, as we, as I begin to understand—is that the wrong idea about that had me all along.”

The Wanderer frowned. “I mean _I_ had the wrong _idea_. I think. Well. Either way.”

They emptied their pipe, but didn’t go to refill it just yet, simply nesting it in a convenient dip between lumps in their carry-bag; then they flopped down heavily on their back, crossing their hind arms behind their head.

It was UrVa’s turn to chuckle a bit. “Ah, old friend. You still never know…whether you’re the subject or the object of the sentence, do you?”

“Can any of us?” murmured UrGoh.

“I suppose not,” the other Mystic allowed. “It is a matter of vantage. But I must wonder what will happen to you, you of the uncertain subject, if you now come to have _two_ vantages, every day and night? For me it’s been hard enough all these ages, just learning to master one.”

“But I already had two.” The Wanderer was back to measuring the stars, though with notably less constant attention and accuracy. Their front hands went on attending to that while one of their hind hands came back out to gesture for emphasis. “So do you. I just didn’t know it. And that’s the trouble, old friend! We are _ending_ that confusion now…even if it’s only to begin another. It’s a different confusion, at least. At our age I probably need a new one. Why don’t you write poetry, UrVa? You should.”

The blessing of hyfule was the ability to seamlessly let go of all changes of topic (if changes they were, of course). “Who told you I didn’t?” returned the Archer, with the faintest sly tinge to their tone.

“If it’s not in my vantage, it _is_ not in my vantage,” UrGoh snorted. “I of the uncertain subject…the uncertain subject of me. —It works either way, actually.”

“With you, Wanderer? Always.”

“You see? That is poetry.”

“I cannot argue.”

“Good. I have…plenty of arguing to do with…” The Wanderer glanced backwards again, upending their head in its pale pool of long hair to do it.

“Yourself?”

“Indeed.”

Unfortunately, hyfule was also much better at taking one away from the original subject than it was at bringing one back. And the Archer hadn’t smoked nearly enough yet to forget about the whole thing entirely—which would have been the other possible mercy-stroke. Now they had no idea how to circle things back around. They’d lost the path, a supremely rare and unwelcome occurrence.

“That was the—strong implication,” UrGoh nodded. “They didn’t say _how_ , of course…typical. For what UrSkek ever completely answered a flesh-wearer’s question?”

UrVa lowered themselves onto their hind elbows, perhaps in the vague hope that joining the Wanderer at their level might help them better follow the eddying flow of thought. “Beg pardon?”

UrGoh waved a weaving hand. “No need.”

“I am asking you what the strong implication was.”

“Oh. I thought you’d asked me—whether GraGoh told us that _all_ the shards must quest for unity now?”

“Not yet,” said the Archer, relieved that their first quandary had just unexpectedly been solved for them. Perhaps the drug knew its business better than they did, after all. “But please, go on.”

UrGoh gave them a skewed little smile. “Ah. Well, I was probably going to say…I doubt any one pair of us…would have the same road to unity as another. _Your_ road has never been anyone else’s. Not as MalVa, not as UrVa, not as—”

The Wanderer spared them the last of their names, though the first one had almost the same effect on them—a chill and a brief racing of their plodding Mystic heart, a sudden lurch of vertigo. Lying on a surface like this, it wasn’t difficult to imagine all of Thra tilting, sliding them off the precipice of this rock shelf into the void between worlds. (The original being with its non-body hadn’t needed to beware that void in anything like the same way the Mystic shard did now; but it wasn’t the original being here anymore, was it. That was, indeed, the trouble.)

“I can’t do it,” UrVa blurted as that moment of syncope faded—taking the Archer, for once, very much by surprise. Their eyes closed. “Because they won’t. Only one half will ever submit to Thra’s will, and one half is not enough. UrGoh, I cannot.”

UrGoh’s warm hand laid itself over UrVa’s. When the latter reluctantly opened their eyes again, the Wanderer had rolled on their side to face them, their own pupils dilated so widely that almost no amber iris was visible, only reflected starlight.

“You hide your pain…so well,” they murmured. The speed with which their ever-placid expression weathered into a ruin of dismay was terrible for the Archer to watch. “I didn’t realize we were hurting you so. Please forgive me, my friend. I was blind. But _you_ …needn’t take this burden up…right this instant?”

They squeezed UrVa’s hand with the overwhelming sincerity that only an UrGoh thoroughly liquified by hyfule could attain, then brought it up to their heart in a gesture the Archer would have taken as melodrama from anyone else on Thra—but coming from the Wanderer, it struck an all-too-real pang. “Some time remains to us yet, UrVa. I’m not here to press or—haunt you. We came to you…tangled up in our own mess. As you’ve seen. But be at peace again…we can have it somewhere else. We can leave tonight, if you need.”

“No,” answered the Archer. “From the way you found me here, and then _they_ found you—I know it was Thra’s will.” They took a deep breath. “I won’t shirk my task. And anyway, I cannot now unlearn what I have learned. The prophecy is the prophecy.”

“I wish I could un-teach it,” the Wanderer lamented.

“Don’t apologize, UrGoh. I have my own to make. You probably don’t know how I wronged you, but it’s no less a wrong for that. When you first arrived, I confess I doubted you…a little…at first. Or thought that, perhaps, the leaf, or the berries—”

UrGoh burst out with a laugh, rolling back over onto their back. Such strange laughter, both regretful and somehow _grateful_ ; not one whit offended, but also seemingly careless of the moment’s gravity, and of course, deeply leaf-addled.

“As well you might, Archer. As very well you very might.” The Wanderer patted UrVa’s arm with an almost Skeksis excess of vigor. “It’s all right—I—I—wondered quite a bit about myself, myself. Whether it was real, and whether…I should trust me in any case. Really, the way I am, the miracle is that anyone…ever takes me seriously at all.” This last had come in a tone approaching the wistful, but now their jaw moved, set itself at an angle the Archer might almost have called—hard. “Though I suppose I must now learn to do better at that. If I’m to tell this vision. Dousan do insist there’s no such thing as… _’just’ the urdrupes_ …whatever they reveal is sacred to Thra. And I think it must be. To have done what it’s done to…them.”

The Archer was still in a nauseous roil thinking of their own _them_ , and the gulf of difference there.

“You’ve never failed to do Thra’s will,” UrGoh reminded them softly. “None of us match your courage and resolve. This won’t be the exception.”

UrVa chuffed perplexedly and sat up, touched but not soothed by the praise.

“But I cannot see _how_ , Wanderer. I think I do fail, but at least I try to honor Thra. They, however, have no true honor. The few ‘duties’ they pretend to claim, even for the Empire, are a flimsy cover for the only things they do…care about.” They looked away now, unable to keep meeting their ancient comrade’s questioning gaze. “Their arrogance. Proving themselves the apex predator of Thra, undefeatable and invulnerable. And their greed and sadism, exercising the ‘rights’ of cruelty which they think nature gives the strong over the weak. As though taking the skulls of sentient beings and—”

They forced themselves to finish at least, only keeping their voice from breaking by a sheer act of will. “—wearing them for _jewelry_ has the same blessing from Thra that a Rakkida has to seek its daily meat.”

UrGoh laid their hand on UrVa’s again. “Some of that was all too true of the Conqueror as well,” was their gentle disputation. “Perhaps less out of a—determination to feel finally, completely _safe_ , though? And more out of…well. I’m still learning that. But some strange burning resentment, and also…” They shook their head. “This distorted idea of…carrying out GraGoh’s secret dreams after all, as though somehow—that would show _me_. Or show us. Still—”

“You believe that it, they, are trying to feel _safe?_ ” interrupted UrVa. Oh, Thra. Strangle this inchoate feeling of…umbrage?…in the nest. Squash it out. One _must_ not take base offense on behalf of either name.

 _This does not speak well of you either, Archer,_ they heard a very Hunter-like voice grating dryly, inside their head.

UrGoh blinked. “I don’t know. It’s the only thing that…makes sense to me, but…oh. Don’t listen. Leaf sets my silly tongue wagging. I presume too much. Forgive again.” They sat up to retrieve their pipe and refill it (since apparently the cure for leaf-addlement was more hyfule). “I only meant…I truly don’t think yours…is any worse than mine.”

“That may not matter,” said the Archer ruefully. “I wasn’t competing on the point. _I_ only meant, I don’t know on what grounds I could ever appeal to them. We’ve seen no vision. I have grave doubts they’d heed one in any case. They care nothing for Thra, as much as they enjoy toying with its lives. Still less for my opinion.” They sighed. “And I am not like you, UrGoh. You know that. I’m not charming, or easeful company, or ready with a jest—”

The Wanderer’s inhalation of fragrant smoke suddenly reversed course and became a coughing fit. _“Wait.”_ They strained and failed at a throat-clearing. “Wait, UrVa— _you_ are jesting—”

“I do not.”

“But in all my countless trine, no one has accused me…of _any_ of that,” UrGoh frankly marveled.

UrVa gave them a dour sidewise glance, then raised one hand up, palm facing the night sky, something akin to a Gelfling poet’s gesture. _“Like Vapran silk…”_

The tip of the Wanderer’s nose and the top of their cheeks pinked a little. “But they are.”

“I am sure they are. And we see who didn’t gainsay you.”

UrGoh covered their eyes briefly with the back of their arm. “Oh, you are right to embarrass me. I flattered myself. I hardly know why…the whim occurred, and I just…the line never knows where I am these days.”

“That’s not my point, old friend,” pursued the Archer, sitting up straighter in renewed agitation. “Save your blushes. The point is, you _are_ charming, whether you like it or not…and just as importantly, they don’t object to being charmed. A few unum ago they thought of almost nothing beyond cutting down foes in battle. Today they—clearly _want_ your little touches and your kind words. What is that, if not charm? I do not begrudge your Vapran silk, especially if it saves Thra. But can you even imagine the Hunter’s reaction to such a thing? …Or me, attempting such a sentiment?”

UrGoh was silent for a long moment.

“Well. I hadn’t been…but now…I can imagine little else.” They raised a speculative brow and rather pointedly extended the pipe to the Archer. “And now, you must smoke this…until you are imagining it too.”

Even in the midst of as close as they ever got to a passion, UrVa didn’t precisely feel anger at this, but a touch of—frustration? Yes. “Wanderer, I am talking about your _vision_ , about Thra.”

“And they are talking about you,” the Wanderer informed them, once again inhabiting that unique vocal space where they could somehow sound both boundlessly playful and infinitely serious. “Just not to where I can quite hear.”

They extended the pipe further. The Archer gave it a look of distaste. UrGoh hummed a trifle sternly, but then added in a more coaxing tone: “My friend. I’d never be so foolish as to tell you… _not_ to ponder your duty.” They touched their temple with a hind hand. “You will ponder away. But neither Thra nor your soul benefits…from this pain you borrow from the future. Allow your heart, at least, the reprieve.”

UrVa acceded, taking the pipe for another, briefer round. “You see,” they rumbled. “Persuasive.”

“I have decided, someday I want very much to behold you…with someone you might speak to of Vapran silk,” remarked UrGoh. “But I allow it likely won’t be the Hunter. Archer, I can’t possibly say what…might move your dark half’s heart. All I know is that there must be something you share. And more, something they _need_ from you, and you only—deny it though they may. If there weren’t…then they would be whole just as they are…and they’re not. No more than you or I.”

They glanced at UrVa, who was praying Thra the deep breaths of smoking would start doing them some good even before the next hit of the hyfule arrived. “Do you ever see them?”

“Barely,” said UrVa. “Now and then I do surveil, just keeping account. They do the same. I’ve only interfered twice in their…business. And they in mine, not at all.”

“But you’ve caught them watching?” UrGoh asked thoughtfully. “What…do they do?”

“Do? Nothing.” The Archer made themselves picture once again the last time. Up by the cataracts of Esh, wasn’t it? And twenty trine ago, if it had been a day. They’d refilled their waterskins and soaked their swollen feet, retied their hair, and then, a shadow more felt than glimpsed in the rocks and brush above…

“They only approach until I know they’re there,” they recalled now. “Testing how close they can get before I notice. The instant I begin to turn my head, they leave.” A rustling sound, the startled consternation of creatures that had been peaceably going about their business… “Quickly, abandoning their stealth.”

“Mm.” UrGoh gestured for the pipe. “Thank you. —Quickly, in fear? Or quickly, to let you hear them?”

“I’m not—”

“Not yet.” The Wanderer held out a hand, not quite pointing with their two longer fingers. UrVa might have asked _not yet what_ or _not yet why,_ but something about the gesture discouraged response. So they obediently fell quiet, both Mystic acceptance and hyfule patience soon flowing in to fill the empty space.

A little later UrGoh dropped their hand again, still with no explanation. It was as though a switch had been thrown.

“Oh. It’s both. It _is_ both,” the Archer realized. Of course. The question was one of those that needed to be felt, not considered, in order to be answered. The sort that verbal thought and direct inspection actively chased away. (Now had UrGoh gotten that trick from UrSu, the Master? It seemed somehow familiar. The Archer couldn’t be sure, though. Their days of sitting by the Master’s knee in the village waiting for wisdom to be fed to them were long, long past.)

UrVa deeply disliked feeling much of anything that had to do with the Hunter—especially anything that came directly _from_ the Hunter. And most especially, that heavy malice, almost a dank haze in the air, which was how their encounters always began. Yet when the dark half fled, yes, something _did_ change in the sensation the Mystic was picking up. There was some wild rush of heartbeat, not just their own but SkekMal’s as well—perhaps together, in time? (Oh, by the Sisters, they did not want to share a heartbeat with that monster, but.) Fear and excitement entwined, so often hard to tell apart in any case, no surprise there. And also…

Hope?

Because it was true. A clean escape would benefit far more from moving a little slower; _not_ letting that wicked tail flick in the branches as the creature ran; not letting its heartbeat push the Mystic’s forward, or its toothy maw fall open, hot and gaping; not letting its talons mark the moist rich earth above the falls; not sending up a flush of terrified birds and beetles—a sight that always made it so inconveniently _hungry_ again in any case. Leaving in such comparatively graceless haste would at once give the Archer a vector, both bearing and speed…more than they needed to track most living things.

Why had it never occurred to UrVa to wonder about that aberrant behavior? It felt quite strange, because again, closely observing movements was something the Archer excelled at, and did all but automatically by now. Their lack of curiosity about this one single lifeform, alone among all Thra’s creatures, was…a notable inconsistency.

“UrGoh, are you saying…you think the beast _wishes_ me to give chase?”

“I can say nothing, UrVa,” the Wanderer repeated, though without a trace of annoyance. “Or rather…that I can say nothing…is all I can say.”

“Can I say, sometimes I think you are never actually leaf-addled at all.”

“Don’t…be insulting.”

The Archer whuffed. “And you are ready with a jest.”

“That, I might…admit to.” UrGoh’s eyes crinkled, although somehow it looked more sad than merry. “If you’ll admit you too are charming.”

They put a dead halt to UrVa’s immediate protest with, “ _At minimum_ , you have discovered…the very nicest way I’ve ever heard to say ‘silly, lazy gadabout.’”

“I meant the words I gave you, my friend,” insisted UrVa with the tiniest note of injury. “I cannot make you keep them, though I wish I could.”

“And I wish I were a better jester. I’d be your court fool all this night, if I thought it would throw the…mighty tracker off this scent for a while.” The Wanderer’s exhalations had been carried off by the breeze for most of this time, but this one lingered about their head in a little cloud in the still air, forming something like a very dim halo. “But since you are impossible to put off…”

“I suppose I may well be. Even when I want to turn away.” And that was true as well. Despite UrGoh’s reassurances that there was time yet, despite their unflagging revulsion toward their other half, despite even the very practical knowledge that dwelling too much on this prophecy and what it specifically meant for the shards of MalVa might be little besides a recipe for madness—they knew now that they would be constantly returning to worry at it. That much was in both halves’ nature.

“Yet you do feel more…in your element again, at least.” Their fellow Mystic studied them intently for a moment from under deep, heavy lids, then emitted a grunt of provisional satisfaction. “And you see now, that’s how it must be done? The Archer’s gifts could never…charm the Conqueror…but then, the Wanderer’s gifts…would never draw out the Hunter. It needs someone…who knows the ways of beasts. Who thinks like you.” They chuffed. “ _Exactly_ like you, in fact. There’s nothing to mourn or fear your lack of, dear one. Whatever your unity may at last require…almost by definition…you and you alone have it.”

“From your throat to the Sisters’ ears,” assented the Archer with a smile, albeit a plaintive one.

“Yes, and from my pipe to the stars.” The Wanderer was reminded by their own words to pass that pipe back to UrVa again, and then they lay back to take in once more the entire vista of those stars. “Or whatever quarter our lost like…can find help from.”

“Indeed,” said UrVa. “In the wilderness, anything to navigate by is a blessing.”


End file.
